gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 * GAS now understands an extended syntax in the .section directive flags
   4   for COFF targets that allows the section's alignment to be specified.  This
   5   feature has also been backported to the 2.20 release series, starting with
   6   2.20.1.
   7
   8 * Add support for the Renesas RX processor.
   9
  10 Changes in 2.20:
  11
  12 * GNU/Linux targets now supports "gnu_unique_object" as a value in the .type
  13   pseudo op.  It marks the symbol as being globally unique in the entire
  14   process.
  15
  16 * ARM assembler now supports .inst[.nw] pseudo-ops to insert opcodes specified
  17   in binary rather than text.
  18
  19 * Add support for common symbol alignment to PE formats.
  20
  21 * Add support for the new discriminator column in the DWARF line table,
  22   with a discriminator operand for the .loc directive.
  23
  24 * Add support for Sunplus score architecture.
  25
  26 * The .type pseudo-op now accepts a type of STT_GNU_IFUNC which can be used to
  27   indicate that if the symbol is the target of a relocation, its value should
  28   not be use.  Instead the function should be invoked and its result used as
  29   the value.
  30
  31 * Add support for Lattice Mico32 (lm32) architecture.
  32
  33 * Add support for Xilinx MicroBlaze architecture.
  34
  35 Changes in 2.19:
  36
  37 * New pseudo op .cfi_val_encoded_addr, to record constant addresses in unwind
  38   tables without runtime relocation.
  39
  40 * New command line option, -h-tick-hex, for sh, m32c, and h8/300 targets, which
  41   adds compatibility with H'00 style hex constants.
  42
  43 * New command line option, -msse-check=[none|error|warning], for x86
  44   targets.
  45
  46 * New sub-option added to the assembler's -a command line switch to
  47   generate a listing output.  The 'g' sub-option will insert into the listing
  48   various information about the assembly, such as assembler version, the
  49   command line options used, and a time stamp.
  50
  51 * New command line option -msse2avx for x86 target to encode SSE
  52   instructions with VEX prefix.
  53
  54 * Add Intel XSAVE, EPT, MOVBE, AES, PCLMUL, AVX/FMA support for x86 target.
  55
  56 * New command line options, -march=CPU[,+EXTENSION...], -mtune=CPU,
  57   -mmnemonic=[att|intel], -msyntax=[att|intel], -mindex-reg,
  58   -mnaked-reg and -mold-gcc, for x86 targets.
  59
  60 * Support for generating wide character strings has been added via the new
  61   pseudo ops: .string16, .string32 and .string64.
  62
  63 * Support for SSE5 has been added to the i386 port.
  64
  65 Changes in 2.18:
  66
  67 * The GAS sources are now released under the GPLv3.
  68
  69 * Support for the National Semiconductor CR16 target has been added.
  70
  71 * Added gas .reloc pseudo.  This is a low-level interface for creating
  72   relocations.
  73
  74 * Add support for x86_64 PE+ target.
  75
  76 * Add support for Score target.
  77
  78 Changes in 2.17:
  79
  80 * Support for the Infineon XC16X has been added by KPIT Cummins Infosystems.
  81
  82 * Support for ms2 architecture has been added.
  83
  84 * Support for the Z80 processor family has been added.
  85
  86 * Add support for the "@<file>" syntax to the command line, so that extra
  87   switches can be read from <file>.
  88
  89 * The SH target supports a new command line switch --enable-reg-prefix which,
  90   if enabled, will allow register names to be optionally prefixed with a $
  91   character.  This allows register names to be distinguished from label names.
  92
  93 * Macros with a variable number of arguments are now supported. See the
  94   documentation for how this works.
  95
  96 * Added --reduce-memory-overheads switch to reduce the size of the hash
  97   tables used, at the expense of longer assembly times, and
  98   --hash-size=<NUMBER> to set the size of the hash tables used by gas.
  99
 100 * Macro names and macro parameter names can now be any identifier that would
 101   also be legal as a symbol elsewhere. For macro parameter names, this is
 102   known to cause problems in certain sources when the respective target uses
 103   characters inconsistently, and thus macro parameter references may no longer
 104   be recognized as such (see the documentation for details).
 105
 106 * Support the .f_floating, .d_floating, .g_floating and .h_floating directives
 107   for the VAX target in order to be more compatible with the VAX MACRO
 108   assembler.
 109
 110 * New command line option -mtune=[itanium1|itanium2] for IA64 targets.
 111
 112 Changes in 2.16:
 113
 114 * Redefinition of macros now results in an error.
 115
 116 * New command line option -mhint.b=[ok|warning|error] for IA64 targets.
 117
 118 * New command line option -munwind-check=[warning|error] for IA64
 119   targets.
 120
 121 * The IA64 port now uses automatic dependency violation removal as its default
 122   mode.
 123
 124 * Port to MAXQ processor contributed by HCL Tech.
 125
 126 * Added support for generating unwind tables for ARM ELF targets.
 127
 128 * Add a -g command line option to generate debug information in the target's
 129   preferred debug format.
 130
 131 * Support for the crx-elf target added.
 132
 133 * Support for the sh-symbianelf target added.
 134
 135 * Added a pseudo-op (.secrel32) to generate 32 bit section relative relocations
 136   on pe[i]-i386; required for this target's DWARF 2 support.
 137
 138 * Support for Motorola MCF521x/5249/547x/548x added.
 139
 140 * Support for ColdFire EMAC instructions added and Motorola syntax for MAC/EMAC
 141   instrucitons.
 142
 143 * New command line option -mno-shared for MIPS ELF targets.
 144
 145 * New command line option --alternate and pseudo-ops .altmacro and .noaltmacro
 146   added to enter (and leave) alternate macro syntax mode.
 147
 148 Changes in 2.15:
 149
 150 * The MIPS -membedded-pic option (Embedded-PIC code generation) is
 151   deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
 152
 153 * Added PIC m32r Linux (ELF) and support to M32R assembler.
 154
 155 * Added support for ARM V6.
 156
 157 * Added support for sh4a and variants.
 158
 159 * Support for Renesas M32R2 added.
 160
 161 * Limited support for Mapping Symbols as specified in the ARM ELF
 162   specification has been added to the arm assembler.
 163
 164 * On ARM architectures, added a new gas directive ".unreq" that undoes
 165   definitions created by ".req".
 166
 167 * Support for Motorola ColdFire MCF528x added.
 168
 169 * Added --gstabs+ switch to enable the generation of STABS debug format
 170   information with GNU extensions.
 171
 172 * Added support for MIPS64 Release 2.
 173
 174 * Added support for v850e1.
 175
 176 * Added -n switch for x86 assembler.  By default, x86 GAS replaces
 177   multiple nop instructions used for alignment within code sections
 178   with multi-byte nop instructions such as leal 0(%esi,1),%esi.  This
 179   switch disables the optimization.
 180
 181 * Removed -n option from MIPS assembler.  It was not useful, and confused the
 182   existing -non_shared option.
 183
 184 Changes in 2.14:
 185
 186 * Added support for MIPS32 Release 2.
 187
 188 * Added support for Xtensa architecture.
 189
 190 * Support for Intel's iWMMXt processor (an ARM variant) added.
 191
 192 * An assembler test generator has been contributed and an example file that
 193   uses it (gas/testsuite/gas/all/test-gen.c and test-exmaple.c).
 194
 195 * Support for SH2E added.
 196
 197 * GASP has now been removed.
 198
 199 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
 200   DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
 201
 202 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
 203
 204 Changes in 2.13:
 205
 206 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
 207   and FR500 included.
 208
 209 * Support for DLX processor added.
 210
 211 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.  Use
 212   the macro facilities in GAS instead.
 213
 214 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
 215   explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
 216   the currently specified base.
 217
 218 Changes in 2.12:
 219
 220 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
 221
 222 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
 223
 224 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
 225   specifying the target instruction set.  The old method of specifying the
 226   target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
 227   compatibility.
 228
 229 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
 230   the ARM assembler.
 231
 232 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
 233   in the assembly.  Contributed by Anders Norlander.
 234
 235 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
 236   but still works for compatability.
 237
 238 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
 239   generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command line option
 240   -n will turn on the warning.
 241
 242 Changes in 2.11:
 243
 244 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
 245
 246 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
 247
 248 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
 249
 250 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
 251
 252 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
 253
 254 * Support for IA-64.
 255
 256 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
 257
 258 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
 259
 260 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
 261
 262 * x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes
 263   due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
 264   translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
 265
 266 Changes in 2.10:
 267
 268 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
 269   operand when altering the flags field.
 270
 271 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
 272
 273 * Support for IBM 370 ELF.  Somewhat experimental.
 274
 275 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
 276
 277 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
 278
 279 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
 280
 281 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
 282
 283 * New --fatal-warnings option.
 284
 285 * picoJava architecture support added.
 286
 287 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
 288
 289 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
 290   assembly programs with intel syntax.
 291
 292 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
 293
 294 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
 295
 296 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
 297
 298 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
 299   produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
 300   of gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
 301   older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
 302
 303 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
 304
 305 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
 306
 307 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
 308
 309 * i960 ELF support added.
 310
 311 * ARM ELF support added.
 312
 313 Changes in 2.9:
 314
 315 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
 316
 317 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
 318   and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
 319
 320 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
 321
 322 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
 323   listing.
 324
 325 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
 326
 327 Changes in 2.8:
 328
 329 * BeOS support added.
 330
 331 * MIPS16 support added.
 332
 333 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
 334
 335 * Alpha/VMS support added.
 336
 337 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
 338   --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
 339
 340 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
 341   maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require
 342   skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
 343   all.
 344
 345 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
 346
 347 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
 348   conditionals in listings.
 349
 350 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
 351   the symbol is already defined.
 352
 353 Changes in 2.7:
 354
 355 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
 356   etc.) if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
 357   can be used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
 358   added.
 359
 360 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
 361
 362 * PowerPC ELF support added.
 363
 364 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
 365
 366 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
 367
 368 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
 369
 370 * SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
 371   default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate
 372   ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
 373   target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
 374
 375 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
 376
 377 Changes in 2.6:
 378
 379 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
 380
 381 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select
 382   MRI mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
 383   ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 384
 385 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 386
 387 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 388
 389 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 390
 391 Changes in 2.4:
 392
 393 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 394
 395 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 396
 397 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
 398   debugging support.
 399
 400 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 401
 402 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 403   provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 404   features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 405   used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 406
 407 * Usage message is available with "--help".
 408
 409 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 410   also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 411
 412 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
 413
 414 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 415   Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 416
 417 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
 418   Paul Kranenburg.
 419
 420 * Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range
 421   now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 422
 423 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 424
 425 Changes in 2.3:
 426
 427 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 428
 429 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 430
 431 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 432   based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work
 433   again too.
 434
 435 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 436   with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 437   version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 438   this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 439   in the "dist" directory.
 440
 441 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
 442   simple tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 443   currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 444
 445 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 446   based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid
 447   the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
 448   making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 449
 450 * Irix 5 support.
 451
 452 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 453   couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 454
 455 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 456   flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 457   handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
 458   added, to make the Alpha port easier.
 459
 460 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is
 461   intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
 462   various phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them
 463   printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 464
 465 Changes in 2.2:
 466
 467 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 468
 469 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 470   have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 471   gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 472   impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 473   reliable.
 474
 475 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 476   displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 477   messages about "internal errors".
 478
 479 * ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 480   Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 481
 482 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
 483   boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly
 484   more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
 485   known.
 486
 487 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 488   If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 489   sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 490   section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 491   its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 492   to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 493   that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 494
 495 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 496   support is in progress.
 497
 498 Changes in 2.1:
 499
 500 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 501   incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 502
 503 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 504   with gcc now.
 505
 506 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 507   suggested by Ronald Cole.
 508
 509 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 510   includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 511   2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 512
 513 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 514
 515 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 516
 517 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 518
 519 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 520
 521 Changes in 2.0:
 522
 523 * Mostly bug fixes.
 524
 525 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 526
 527 Changes in 1.94:
 528
 529 * BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 530   "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
 531   format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf"
 532   or "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got
 533   some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
 534   fully merged yet.)
 535
 536 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 537   without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 538
 539 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 540   saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 541
 542 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 543   code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can
 544   make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD
 545   4.4, supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
 546   coming.
 547
 548 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 549
 550 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 551   Youngdale.
 552
 553 Changes in 1.93.01:
 554
 555 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 556
 557 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 558
 559 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 560   doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 561   can be distinguished from the register.
 562
 563 * Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 564   of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 565
 566 \f
 567 Local variables:
 568 fill-column: 79
 569 End: